Study of a Male Head. Sanguine chalk on paper; 14 x 11 3/4 inches (35.5 x 30 in.). Private collection. Image courtesy of Maas Gallery, London.
Hughes was justifiably famous for his red chalk drawings and this one of an Italian male model is surely one of his finest. According to Scott Thomas Buckle the model is probably the youthful Orazio Cervi, the same model who is thought to have posed for his Study for Fra Filippo Lippi. Cervi was a well-known model and posed for many prominent Victorian artists including Frederic Leighton and J. E. Millais. He was Hamo Thornycroft's favourite model and is known to have posed for his masterpieces The Teucer and The Mower. Cervi appears to be the model for the kneeling figure of Bertuccio in Bertuccio's Bride where he is wearing a very similar cap to the model in this drawing.
Edward Burne-Jones, no mean slouch himself when it came to red chalk drawings, admired Hughes's use of red chalk, in particular its colour, and later adopted Hughes's method of use. A letter from Burne-Jones to Hughes, quoted in Georgiana Burne-Jones's Memorials, elaborates on this:
A letter to Mr. E.R. Hughes shows how eagerly he desired to find a certain red colour in chalk. His anxiety for it had been noticed by a model, and by her reported to Mr. Hughes, who kindly wrote to give him some information about it. "I should never have dreamed of asking how any effect was produced," Edward answered; "F. mistook a little. I only asked if your red chalk was the ordinary red chalk of commerce, for she said she thought it much more crimson than mine. Now the ancient red is a far more crimson and rosy tint than the dusty brown sticks they give us now, and I have understood always that the ancient red is exhausted and that we have fallen on evil days and can get no more of it, and as I am always asking about it of every colourman I meet, in vain, and as she – the aforementioned F.– was sure yours was a rosy colour compared to mine, I was fired with fresh desire for that ancient treasure…. But your method of using this poor substitute reads admirably, and I shall assuredly use it. [322]
The Maas Gallery, London has most generously given its permission to use in the Victorian Web information, images, and text from its catalogues. The copyright on text and images from their catalogues remains, of course, with the Maas Gallery.
Readers should consult the gallery website (link) to obtain information about recent exhibitions and to order their catalogues. [JB]
Bibliography
300 Years of British Drawings. London: Christie's (8 December 2020): lot 55.
Burne-Jones, Georgiana. Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones. Vol. II. London: The MacMillan Company Ltd., 1904.
Drawings. London: Maas Gallery, 2016, cat. 78.
Created 14 May 2026